7.0 Tank Wishlist

[DRKoftheAzure]

taking drk into a levelling roulette is almost always a miserable experience.

While Dark Knight is the worst one out of the four, all tanks in leveling roulette are miserable experience with Gunbreaker not being AS miserable at level 70 and beyond, but Burst Strike feels bad without Continuation... And Paladin had this problem since A Realm Reborn! Like we want to move AWAY from A Realm Reborn Paladin leveling design, NOT towards it!

[Eldhelion]

- add a trait to Shield Bash where it will get its potency increased after using Intervene and removes the stun effect. Can combo into Riot Blade. Combo'ed Riot Blade from Shield Bash will also give 15 Oath Gauge, in addition to 1000MP.

Make shield bash a oGcd that is weaved in between Fast Blade/Riot Blade/Royal Authority

[rawker]

Make shield bash a oGcd that is weaved in between Fast Blade/Riot Blade/Royal Authority

The main idea was to introduce alternative openers to combos with added utility. As of current date, there's already Expiacion and Circle of Scorn. Adding more oGCDs with no other requirement is just boring. Just see EW SMN.

[J-Reyno]

If you want more active engagement with incoming damage outside of the occasional tankbuster, you need to more consistently push tanks to the brink.

The only way this would work is by redesigning tanks, giving them more tools to actually respond to consistently threatening damage. That includes having more self-sustain. More threatening damage with current tank kits is just going to be healer engagement, because healer is the role with no cooldown sustain and near zero resource management.

Turning the tank into a ping pong health ball for the boss and healers to bounce between each other with little input from the tank is not gonna make the role more engaging for tank players.

The reason this works in other games is because tanks have consistent, active defense gameplay. Some of them even have class mechanics that revolve around defenses with abilities that interact with cool mitigation passives, like Brewmaster from WoW.

Even that flop DCUO game from like 2009 had better tank gameplay that saw you constantly rotating shields, mit and self-heal abilities as your primary form of gameplay in a desperate bid to stay alive.

FFXIV doesn't have all that. Tanks here are 90% doing raw damage and then occasionally pressing a defensive ability that has little to no interactivity with their kit. All of the other elements of tanking are baked into passive enmity and mitigation.

[rawker]

I might be blind but i have not seen anyone suggested to make Sword Oath Stacks be a part of PLD's gauge.

[DRKoftheAzure]

I might be blind but i have not seen anyone suggested to make Sword Oath Stacks be a part of PLD's gauge.

I knew I forgot something for Paladin when I wrote my wishlist for tanks, thank you for reminding me and I updated my post to reflect that.

[Lyth]

...

There are two trends that have occurred across the past few expansions. First, the amount of mitigation and self-sustain provided by tanks and healers has steadily increased over time. This is partially because most support jobs see at least one or two defensive additions to their toolkit every expansion, and partially because when a job within a support role gets a new defensive buff, everyone else starts demanding parity. The end result is a net inflation of your mitigation toolkits over time.

The second is that damage output has generally gone down over time. Historically, mobs including bosses were allowed to land critical hits. That created degree of damage variance and unpredictability that you needed to be able to respond to. Bosses also had a higher frequency of tankbusters, which in turn forced more tank swaps. As an example, the opening phase of T9 alone had about four tankbusters in its loop. That's more tankbusters than you see in some modern Savage fights. In between tankbusters, there were fairly regular cleaves, which hit for half your HP and could kill party members if positioned incorrectly. This was at a time when tanks had much fewer defensive abilities than we have now, and PLD had no raidwide mitigation. And you're asking for more mitigation and self-healing tools across all tanks? Have you seen current day WAR?

The reason why we've gotten to this place is because everyone wants to treat this like a single player game where they have personal control over the outcome. That's fine for a DPS player because you're there to do as much damage as possible and focus on your own mechanical execution. The reason why support roles were traditionally interesting was because your performance was interlinked with your team. If you want to survive the incoming damage you do need to rely on your healers for healing and shielding. If you want to have enough mitigation tools to survive incoming tankbusters, you need to swap with your co-tank. Not because the game puts a debuff on you, but because you might run out of cooldowns. This interdependence does mean that sometimes you die for reasons outside of your control. But it also gives you opportunities to shine by cross-compensating and cooperating with your teammates. If you extract this away from tanks, then tanks end up functionally as melee dps on training wheels.

[J-Reyno]

And you're asking for more mitigation and self-healing tools across all tanks?

In the scenario where tanks are consistently pushed to the brink with near-lethal damage? Yes. Which is why I said that they would have to be redesigned, rather than adding a bunch of mitigation and self-healing to their kits in the game's current environment.

It'd be different if tanks had consistently available defensive GCDs that they could weave to contend with more damage or had as many defensive abilities as healers have healing abilities, so there are at least more options and active gameplay for managing threatening damage.

But we don't have that. Tanks in this game are designed with a "just do damage, and then use this defensive occasionally when you need it" mentality. They are not designed from the perspective of actual tanking, active and rotational management of defenses and sustain, being the primary element of gameplay.

And that's what would be needed to actually improve tank engagement imo. Otherwise there's nothing in this scenario for tanks beyond waiting for your healer to fix the problem. Which they can do easily as a role with zero cooldown near-zero resource management sustain.

[Supersnow845]

In the scenario where tanks are consistently pushed to the brink with near-lethal damage? Yes. Which is why I said that they would have to be redesigned, rather than adding a bunch of mitigation and self-healing to their kits in the game's current environment.

It'd be different if tanks had consistently available defensive GCDs that they could weave to contend with more damage or had as many defensive abilities as healers have healing abilities, so there are at least more options and active gameplay for managing threatening damage.

But we don't have that. Tanks in this game are designed with a "just do damage, and then use this defensive occasionally when you need it" mentality. They are not designed from the perspective of actual tanking, active and rotational management of defenses and sustain, being the primary element of gameplay.

And that's what would be needed to actually improve tank engagement imo. Otherwise there's nothing in this scenario for tanks beyond waiting for your healer to fix the problem. Which they can do easily as a role with zero cooldown near-zero resource management sustain.

Square can’t even design the healers with this philosophy in mind I have no idea why you expect they will get the tanks right

Going down that path is only going to lead to basically what the healers already are, a pathetic DPS “rotation” while you drown in a wealth of GCD and oGCD defensives that you barely use because they are terrified of upping damage in this game

Don’t get me wrong I fully agree tanking barely exists in this game and that a full “defensive rotation” rather than just “melee DPS with a defensive weave every 30 seconds” is much more interesting but trying to pursue that path in this day and age is just going to lead to a blue version of what the modern healers play like

[J-Reyno]

Square can’t even design the healers with this philosophy in mind I have no idea why you expect they will get the tanks right

Going down that path is only going to lead to basically what the healers already are, a pathetic DPS “rotation” while you drown in a wealth of GCD and oGCD defensives that you barely use because they are terrified of upping damage in this game

I don't expect them to get tanks right. I'm explaining what they would need to do to get tanks right